


(finding love) in the strangest places

by jdphoenix



Series: drabble collections [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:28:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of fics written for location-based smut prompts. Will mostly, if not entirely, be Jemma/various.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (Jemma/Grant) in front of the fireplace

**Author's Note:**

> Over on tumblr I took location prompts for smut and figured the best way to post would be here in a collection. Pairings will, naturally, vary, as will lengths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While this takes place in the same universe as a couple of other drabbles I've written you do NOT have to read those to understand this. However, if you're interested you can find them [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3788917/chapters/8501017) and [here](http://ilosttrackofthings.tumblr.com/post/126762063299/do-stop-pouting-your-were-only-mildly-blown-up).

“You’re gonna get me shot,” Grant says while fingernails drag along his scalp and small hips roll against his. “A firing squad is in my future.” She drops a hand to his lap to undo his zipper and pull him out so he can feel _not_ underwear beneath her conservative skirt, nothing at all but wet heat. Oh God. “My _immediate_ future.” 

“He’ll be gone for hours,” Jemma soothes, pressing the words into his neck. The end of her ponytail brushes his chest above his collar and he lets out a hoarse breath.

The _he_ in question is Daniel Whitehall. Head of HYDRA. Sick son of a bitch. Owner of the couch they’re defiling and the office they snuck into. Oh, and Jemma’s adopted father. Yeah, this is gonna go so well.

“You hate me,” Grant says while his hands - they must hate him too - wrap around her hips and slide up her sides, exposing skin as they go. “That’s the only explanation. You’re still pissed I called you out on that Raina thing and-”

She gives him a tug and he’s not sure _how_ , but he ends up flat on the floor in front of Whitehall’s fireplace with Jemma seated on his hips. She smiles down at him, that same wicked grin she gives to test subjects when she’s about to start cutting into them.

It should _not_ be hot.

“If I hated you, you’d be in one of my cages downstairs.” She drags the back of her hand down his cheek and then her back straightens and she’s- and he’s- _fuck_.

He sucks in air through his teeth, trying not to come as she settles around him.

“This,” she says as her muscles clench experimentally around him, “I only do with people I like.”

Part of him - the part that hasn’t gone _completely fucking insane_ \- is relieved; that means his cover as a good Hydra soldier is succeeding. But there’s another part - an incredibly small part he will _never_ admit exists because this is Whitehall’s pet psychopath riding his dick - that goes momentarily cold with jealousy.

His hands catch her hips again, helping her find a rhythm that works for the both of them, and he asks, “You bring all your favorite guards up here?”

She smiles and for a second, one brief heartbeat of time, she looks like the young woman she is and not like some poor soul who’s been brainwashed - not overtly, but there are other ways - into buying Hydra’s crap and following Whitehall’s lead. “Oh yes,” she says, “that’s why you’re the only one who’s gotten this particular honor.”

He wishes she was that person. Normal. Not broken and twisted and wrong in ways Grant can’t even fathom. It’s all the way down in her _bones_ and Whitehall did that to her. Grant’s gonna kill him for that.

And that’s … not his mission. This is purely intelligence gathering. He’s losing focus on what really matters.

“Death sentence,” he corrects with a pasted on smile that never fails to charm.

She shifts her weight in a way that makes his blood sing. “Then you’d better make the most of it.”

He does and he will, for as long as he can keep her.

 


	2. (Jemma/Lincoln) in a pillow fort

“If you move,” he says softly, “you’ll knock it down and they’ll find us.”

Oh, but _he’s_ allowed to move all he likes? Completely unfair.

Even more unfair is what his fingers are doing between her thighs. She presses her palm over her open mouth to stifle what she’s sure would be a very embarrassing keen.

Footsteps echo through the concrete floor and she whimpers as he cuts off to listen. His hand slides up her outer thigh, reminding her to be quiet as if she needed it.

“Where the hell is he?” Hunter demands. “There are only so many places he can hide when half the doors in the base are sealed shut.”

“Yeah,” Mack says, “but he’s the guy with the magic touch that can open them. He could be anywhere.”

Such as under the pillow fort the boys spent all morning making because “it’s a good strategic exercise.” Jemma is certain that wasn’t at all why, but she can’t exactly complain given her current use of it.

She hadn’t intended on hiding here - or hiding at all, really - but after the county-wide power outage took out even the Playground’s generators (thanks, Dr. Doom), it wasn’t long before people started to realize they had their own walking, talking power source. Somewhere. Jemma rather thinks the inevitability of that conclusion is why Lincoln disappeared at the first opportunity.

She parted ways with Fitz and Daisy after it became clear they weren’t going to be helping him hide. Lincoln must have overhead her muttering about him not being a battery because the next thing she knew, she was being dragged in here.

Which, come to think of it, sounds rather ominous given where they’ve ended up, but she’s not complaining. She’s spent _weeks_ dreaming of Lincoln’s hands on her - since long before he and Daisy broke up, shamefully - and the reality is just as pleasant (and as frustrating) as she’d imagined.

He bends low over her, his scruff brushing against her cheek so he can breath a faint “shhhh” into her ear. She’s in the middle of rolling her eyes over the obviousness of that advice (really? Stay quiet when the _men hunting for them_ are mere feet away? Revolutionary) when his fingers twist, causing her toes to curl and her back to arch and her teeth to scrape against her own palm.

Oh, he is _horrid_. But, as Hunter and Mack’s footsteps fade away in the direction of the labs, she thinks she could put up with it if only he’d do that again.


	3. (Jemma/Grant) in the ruins of a city i.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a SUPER popular location (I even got a fourth request for it while I was getting ready to post this) so if you prompted a different ship, don't worry, I have plans.

Jemma is naked (gloriously, freely naked for the first time in _weeks_ ) and Ward is standing in the doorway. It should be easy to avoid moments like this, given that they’re the only two people in the city - the only two people on the _planet_ \- but they can’t seem to stop running into each other. Ever since that moment she heard his laughter echoing across the valley and watched it take him first to his knees and then tumbling end over end down a sandy hillside, they can’t seem to stop stepping on each other’s toes.

“Sorry,” he says but doesn’t make to turn away or even close his eyes. He’s not staring; his eyes are right where they belong on her face, but somehow that’s all the worse. She can feel a blush burning at all the soft bits of skin that up to now have remained protected from the elements of this barren world.

Of course, she’s not exactly hiding either. She’s made no move at all to cover up.

The realization makes her throat dry (dry _er_ , it’s been dry almost since landing in this accursed endless desert) and she stutters over her words. “Di- did you need something?”

A slow breath leaves him and she’s struck yet again by how different he is from the Ward she knew on the Bus. They took him for dead when he never returned from the Fridge - when Garrett _did_ return. (Even now, the memory of Garrett’s hysterical laughter when Coulson demanded to know what had become of him makes Jemma’s heart ache. Skye cried for a _month_ afterward.) It turns out, however, that he was the victim of one of the Fridge’s alien artifacts - the same one that landed her here after it was recovered from Hydra.

He’s spent a year stranded here with no hope of rescue; it’s changed him.

“I did,” he says in a wry sort of way that reminds her of private conversations on the Bus. The corner of his mouth hitches up in a smile. “Can’t remember it now though.”

He takes a furtive step forward and only then seems to realize what’s wrong with this picture. He drags his hand down his beard and looks away, to the view out the window. The alien city may be abandoned, empty save for dust and echoes, but in the planet’s eternal twilight the skyline is still impressive.

“Sorry,” he says again and seems to mean it this time. “I should-” His eyes dart back to her - to her body this time - before skittering away. “I should go.”

She steps forward herself before he can turn away. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

He freezes and she closes the distance between them carefully. She wraps her fingers in the fraying pockets of his tactical vest and holds him to her. She spent the last three weeks utterly alone in this hell. Before that she spent a year watching the world she swore to protect spin increasingly out of control and all that time, Ward - and what he would do, how different things would be if only they still had their team’s shining knight with them - was never far from her thoughts. And before that she spent the better part of a year nursing a humiliating crush on him.

After all of that, finding him now, here … if she believed in such things she’d call it destiny.

“I missed you,” she says. And then, because she is nothing if not self-destructively honest, she has to go and add, “I know you and Skye were- I know I’m not her and I’m not even asking for that - despite appearances to the contrary - but I’d feel better if you-”

He kisses her. And he touches her. And when he lays her down on the strange, alien bed, he says her name like a prayer and this planet doesn’t feel quite so hopeless anymore.

 


	4. (Jemma/Will) in a closet

Will’s finally walking again. No wheelchair, no cane, just his own two feet under him. It’s really nice.

And Jemma seems determined to bring him to his knees.

He barely even gave her the good news before she dragged him into the nearest storage closet. He thought at first there was some kind of threat (there’s _always_ a threat around here and if he hadn’t spent the last fourteen years with his own serial killer neighbor, he might be a little turned off by all the stress) but there isn’t. Unless he counts the threat to his stability.

“Jemma,” he says, questioning.

“Busy,” she says, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth and - oh - sliding her hand over his cheek before going back to pushing his shirt up.

He has to take a second to recenter himself after that. After years of having a beard, the skin on his face is incredibly sensitive. Having her touch him there is a hell of a lot more heady than what she’s doing to his chest - and she’s no slouch down there.

“Your friends,” he reminds her.

“The odds-” she says between kisses- “of any of them - coming into this particular closet - at this exact moment - are eight hundred and seventy to one.”

He chuckles and catches her face in his hands to pull her back up. “You made that up.”

She frowns and there’s this teasing sparkle in her eye that has always - from the moment she asked for some alcohol, hell, from the first time she tried flirting to get out of that cage he stuck her in - made him fall a little.

“I am offended you would imply such a thing, William Daniels.” Her haughty tone says she’s done with him, but the hand she’s sliding up and down his arm says very differently. “I carefully considered the number of closets such as this one on base, as well as which of my friends are not currently in the field, along with-”

He kisses her. Not to shut her up - but he figures that was her aim - but because he missed the sound of her voice and her science rambles and even after three weeks of her constantly at his side while he’s recovered, he can’t seem to stop being in awe that he’s got her back.

So he lets her bring him to his knees and then some because having her back, being able to touch her and feel her, is way better than his pride.

 


	5. (Jemma/Hive) against a wall

Things have gotten out of hand. It’s not the first time over the last year and a half that Jemma’s had that or similar thoughts, but as the Inhuman - the millennia old Inhuman from the other side of the universe - regards her in the privacy of his own quarters, she really has to think it again.

She’s had enough contact with him since Malick moved her to this base that she knows better than to think any of the rest: that none of her previous undercover assignments have prepared her for one of this magnitude. When she was merely one of the many worker bees in Whitehall’s Hydra, that was one thing, but her time undercover at the ATCU has convinced Malick she’s some sort of authority on Inhumans and now she’s … here.

“Did you need something?” she asks as the Inhuman continues to stare from his perch on the end of the bed. She was ordered here out of the blue and the last time someone was ordered here - well, there was a great deal of screaming is all she knows. She’s hoping whatever’s brought her here is significantly less painful. “A more thorough briefing on our findings? O- or medical care?”

She doubts very much he needs that. Two weeks ago he was a corpse and now he’s - her eyes travel over the bare back and shoulders, utterly healed to the point that even Ward’s old scars are gone - better.

“Your mind is not like the others,” he says, rising smoothly from his seat.

She falls back a step involuntarily. “I- I’m a genius. A prodigy.” She doesn’t say it to sound prideful, but she can’t seem to stop talking. “Youngest ever to graduated SciTech.”

“You want this body,” he says slowly.

She shakes her head, thrown off-balance by the sudden shift in topic. “No, I- I knew your host. But that was ages ago.” She swallows as cold memories rise up. “Before the uprising.”

That’s not true though. She didn’t know Ward before the uprising. She only really knew him after.

Her back hits the wall and the Inhuman tips her chin up. He’s close enough she imagines she can feel his heart beating - or maybe that’s only her own going double-time.

“You wanted this body,” he amends. His fingers slip down the column of her throat to lower the collar of her shirt until his knuckles brush the cup of her bra. “You still do.”

His touch burns hot enough to make the room seem cold around them and she shivers. Her palms press against the wall.

“Your point?” she asks.

“I think we can be of use to one another,” he says.

He slides his free hand into her hair and bends slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. It has the side effect of building her anticipation to the point of eagerness, which she imagines is his intention, and when he kisses her, she leans readily into him. 

He was right, of course; she did and does want Ward’s body. It’s the only thing left of him that’s still the man she was so hopelessly in love with on the Bus. She spent so long dreaming of kissing him that even this twisted nightmare version of that dream is enough to rob her of her senses.

In short order they’re undressed - more or less. He was already shirtless, as is his wont, and she’s only gone so far as to unbutton her shirt and free up the necessities. And then he’s lifting her, strong arms picking her bodily up from the ground, pressing her into the wall and then pressing into her.

Her head slams back against the wall and it _stings_. His hand is there in a heartbeat, his smile sharp as he cushions her from harming herself. His palm suffuses her smarting skull with warmth that she can almost feel all the way through to her brain.

This is wrong, she thinks as he pounds into her, his fingers playing with her soft folds and driving her to distraction. It’s wrong in so many ways she can’t even put to words but it’s wrong because this body of his, the one he offered her, is stolen. Ward wasn’t a friend, not truly, but he was still a _person_.

The Inhuman’s fingers press just so against her warm center and her head tips back into his hand as his rhythm grows quicker, more frantic. He’s always so aloof, so above the rest of them mere mortals - not now. His eyes are wild and his breathing unsteady and that perfect body is shimmering with sweat from the exertion of giving her pleasure.

That wasn’t all there was though, was it?

She realizes as he drives her closer to the edge and her legs tighten around his waist (how did they get _there_?) that he offered a _trade_ , not a gift. What did he say?

It’s so hard to think though, when he’s filling her up and his hands - both of them - are doing such lovely things and-

It’s not just physically that he’s filling her up and she _can_ feel the heat of his hand all the way to her brain. She can feel _him_. He’s in her head.

His smile grows as she comes to the realization. He can see his own face through her eyes and she can see- She smiles to match his in the moment before she falls over the edge.

She is at once miles above herself and completely aware when he carries her to the bed. He doesn’t bother fixing her clothes and instead removes the last of them to trail his fingers along her still buzzing skin as she comes back down.

She sighs once she’s finally fully in the moment again and meets his eyes. He’s still inside her mind, filling up all her empty spaces. He’d be crushing if he wasn’t holding her up.

“I like your mind,” she says as his thoughts hum through hers.

His fingers find the sensitive side of her breast. “I like your body.”

 


	6. (Jemma/Grant) in a castle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up also being very Jemma/Will in terms of emotional shippiness, so ... yeah.

The door squeaks in its hinges when it swings open. It might just be for atmosphere - she is in a dungeon, after all - but she thinks perhaps she should inform someone. Which is a silly thought; who cares what the prisoner thinks?

A blanket, thick and warm, settles over her shoulders and strong hands rub up and down her arms, suffusing warmth into skin that must be frozen solid by now. She’s been cold for hours, ever since the moment the portal reopened and-

“Simmons,” Ward says, his tone a touch pleading. “Simmons, please, look at me.”

She does - not because he deserves it, but because she’s too empty to care that she should, rightly, defy him at every opportunity. What’s the point anymore?

His mouth wavers when their eyes meet and his expression settles into one she knows now is a lie. “There you are,” he says kindly, brushing some of her tired hair back from her face. “Had me worried for a while.”

He’s still holding her tight. Her legs are curled beneath her - she hasn’t moved since she practically fell into the corner of the cell’s tiny cot - and he’s sitting against her calves, his own legs hanging over the edge.

She swallows even though it’s sharp in her throat; the actually speaking is worse. “Fitz?” she croaks. “Coulson?”

His friendly smile falls. “They escaped.” If anyone’s listening, it sounds dark and dire and angry. The thumb that slides around her arm says different.

It could be another deception meant to make her believe he’s on her side. She doesn’t bother to care. She doesn’t even bother to be relieved. It’s selfish, but all she can think is that it’s fitting. She’s alone, just like Will was when…

She closes her eyes and turns away, trying to lean into the wall again. Ward, always determined to foil her plans, gathers her close to his chest instead.

Will is dead. Killed and hollowed out by _It_. And she knew. The moment she laid eyes on him - or, more precisely, the moment his eyes slid over her as if she was _nothing_ , that’s when she knew he was gone.

She abandoned him and he died. Alone. Just like she will.

Except she’s not alone. Ward is here and comforting her for reasons she can’t hope to understand and part of her wants it to be real because she doesn’t want to live the way Will did for so long and she doesn’t want to die that way either.

Slowly, she tips her head back until she finds the bare skin of his neck. He pulls her closer, giving her all the comfort he thinks she’s seeking. His skin beneath her lips is so _warm_ compared to the ice still freezing her veins that it nearly burns, but she can’t stop. The near-pain of it is _real_ and it anchors her the way nothing has for hours - for months, if she’s honest.

“Simmons.” His arms uncurl from her back to grip her again, this time pushing her away. She tries to stop him, but she’s nowhere near strong enough to counter even his gentle push. “What are you doing?”

She hates herself for the tears she can feel in her eyes, but she can’t help them. “I loved him,” she says and Ward’s confused expression freezes. She never even told Will; she’s told Fitz and now Ward, but Will died without knowing how deeply she cared for him. “He saved my life and I loved him and I left him in that place and now he’s _gone_.”

She doesn’t know what Ward is thinking, but whatever it is, it furrows his brow for long enough that her emotions grow tepid and a few errant tears fall simply for having nowhere else to go. Finally, he seems to come to some decision and his focus sharpens to meet her eyes.

“I think I know a little of how that feels,” he says with a twist to his lips that might be mocking if it weren’t so self-pitying.

Something like hope (but it’s not, it _can’t_ be; that died along with Will) twists her heart and then Ward is leaning into her, pressing her down into the narrow mattress and pouring heartbreak and frustration to match her own into her.

For a time, he’s unbearably gentle, taking care with all her lingering hurts from the telekinetic’s attentions as well as his own, but that’s too much like Will, who always bordered on worshipful of her, treating her like his goddess of rain in the desert. Soon enough she entices him to turn rough instead, the way she always imagined specialists to be. He still minds her injuries, but he adds pleasant bruises to the ones she’s already suffered and looks at her with more possession than awe.

She comes with a hoarse cry that echoes in the tiny cell and Ward pants his own orgasm into the junction of her neck and shoulder. He collapses, a solid weight holding her where she is as she idly fingers the unfamiliar scars he’s added to the old. She’s spent and filthy in more ways than one, but for the first time since Will’s eyes failed to meet hers, she feels anything other than empty.

 


	7. (Jemma/It) in the ruins of a city ii.

Despite the towering skyscrapers and the paved road she stands on the edge of, Jemma thinks, from the light and the way the sand moves through the air, that she’s on the planet again. It wouldn’t be so odd. For a long stretch after Fitz returned, she dreamed of nothing else but nights spent with Will. It was a faint kindness, her subconscious choosing to torment her only upon waking with the reality of his absence rather than giving her nightmares of his judgment and accusations.

But of course that’s not Will at all.

She’s not though - on the planet, that is - it takes a moment but when the clouds move the sky turns pink instead of blue. The sun is up.

She tips her head back and it lands against a firm shoulder, strong arms catch her hips in an embrace no less solid for how gentle it is.

“Beautiful,” a voice says in her ear. It might be Will’s, it might even be Ward’s (he too has appeared in her dreams; when her subconscious began to have enough of Will, it brought up shameful dreams from those early days on the Bus mixed with twisted fantasies of how their encounters since then might have gone, things she never would have thought herself capable of imagining), but it’s not either of them.

She lifts a hand to catch what turns out not to be sand, but snow floating through the air. Rather than fall down her arm, her sleeve disappears entirely and she’s left in nothing but her jeans and bra. The hands on her hips move readily to stroke her stomach, her chest. The edge of a jaw rests against her skull, cocooning her in his hold. Her hips roll back on instinct even as her mind is busy studying the snow in her palm.

It’s not only snow, not pure and white as it should be. Nearly all of it is stained dark, like it’s mixed with ash, and she thinks, between one blink and the next, that she an see a spot of bright red in the mix.

Where _is_ she?

The body behind hers shifts and suddenly she’s pressed into a brick wall. He’s tall enough to dwarf her, tall enough to out the sun when she turns her face to his. “Don’t you agree?” he asks and this time she thinks his voice sounds more like wind between rocks than a truly human voice.

She turns to look down the narrow street. Its desolated. Windows shattered, foundations crumbling; the bricks at her back suddenly develop a crack that’s sharp below the clasp of her bra. She even, for a heartbeat, swears she can see corpses beneath the shadows burned into the walls.

Fingers brush against her cheek, sending a shiver through her that becomes a tidal wave when he kisses her. It’s not Will’s kiss, warm and desperate, it’s more like Ward’s - or her imagining of Ward’s - heated and demanding, taking almost before she has the thought to give.

The hands are like Will’s though, holding her together as much as they break her apart.

And when he breathes a faint, “Only for you,” in her ear before dropping to his knees and pressing his mouth to her core, that’s something entirely new. Her fingers twine in his hair and she’s barely had the thought she must be hurting him, her nails are digging in so tight, before she knows she can’t; she isn’t capable of doing him harm. She’s small next to him, insignificant except that he gives her notice.

Her vision darkens as he drives her higher. The sky turns red and she can feel blood running down her back from the edge of that crack in the wall and none of that matters because he’s-

 

The sound of the alarm jolts Jemma out of her dream. She takes a second - only one because an alarm in the Playground is sure to mean catastrophe - to push down that- that- that _whatever_ that was. It was nonsense and she shivers in disgust even as her body craves the release her mind thought it was heading for.

She grabs her phone off her nightstand with numb fingers and pulls up the news story Coulson’s sent around to give them all a heads up as to the nature of the emergency. She’s barely opened it before the phone slips to her lap.

The headline is about an Inhuman - one of the “secret aliens in our midst” - going nuclear and decimating a metropolis. The photo accompanying it is straight out of Jemma’s dream; it’s even snowing amidst the falling ash.

 


	8. (Jemma/Brock) under the stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in the same universe as [meeting in the hospital](http://ilosttrackofthings.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3A-meeting-in-a-hospital/chrono), you should read that first.

His muscles have just started to relax enough that he can maybe sleep in this dented old pick-up truck bed when she asks, “But what if there _was_ something else?” 

He sighs, resigned to only getting a couple hours sleep tonight - if that. “You mean like the Avengers? ‘Cause I kinda burned that bridge when I tried to kill Captain America.”

She shifts, waking up the whole left side of his body. The handcuffs keeping her from running away in the night rattle between their wrists. “I mean like SHIELD.”

He huffs out a laugh. “Ain’t nothin’ like SHIELD anymore, doc. Hell, never was. SHIELD was a mask HYDRA wore to make ourselves look pretty.” And, he thinks privately, even if SHIELD were still around, it’s not like they’d take him back. See: the attempted murder of Captain America.

She rolls over so her breath falls across the scars on his neck, made raw again by the extremis, and her free hand lands on his shoulder. “There is,” she whispers like she’s afraid someone in the thirty square miles of nothing surrounding them might hear.

He turns his head so she’s sure to see his furrowed brow. Her lip’s caught between her teeth and her eyes are bright in the moonlight.

“When I was on the mission with Bakshi, the one where I was injured, I saw them. SHIELD agents.”

He looks back up at the stars, shifting his whole body to get comfortable again. “Probably just some team leftover from the old days, trying to pick at the big, bad HYDRA.”

“Bakshi seemed to think they were more than that.” She sounds hopeful, just this side of desperate. “What if they are? What if there’s a whole SHIELD being built back up that’s in need of a man with your skills?” She pulls herself a little closer. Her chin rests on his shoulder and her knuckles brush his. His palm itches to take her hand. “You’re not really HYDRA anymore; why not be SHIELD again?”

“Because I never was.” He regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. Her eager expression falls, leaving something sad and empty in its place and he wants so bad to bring it back that he rolls and catches the back of her head before she can pull away. “Why do you care so damn much, doc?”

Her mouth falls open and maybe it’s just the precarious way they’re balanced on their sides or spending every minute of every day together, running for their lives from their old bosses, but he thinks he’s reading the situation right. He lets gravity carry him forward, rolls her right under him, cushioning the fall so she doesn’t hurt that genius head of hers and tangling his fingers in her hair when he pulls them free. There’s no fear in her face, only more of what he was reading a second ago. 

She swallows and he watches the way it moves down the column of her throat, keeps tracking it even after, down to the carefully controlled rise and fall of her breasts. Thoughts of touching them - with more than just his hands - flash through his head and he drags his eyes back up to hers.

The cuffs rattle and catch, her hand caught between the filthy truck bed and his cheek. Her mouth tips down on one side. “I want you to be safe,” she says softly.

She’s sweet. Way too sweet for HYDRA and damn too sweet for him. He should let her go. That’s what a SHIELD agent would do.

Brock’s never been a SHIELD agent.

He curls his hand under her head again, rests his elbow on the bed to support his weight while he kisses her. It’s hard, demanding, probably not the kind of thing she’s used to, but when she whines into his mouth, her hips press up against his. She’s still fighting at the cuffs, has one hand at the back of his neck so he can’t explore her breasts the way he wants. He’s gotta back up, put his weight on his knees and tear at her shirt with his teeth to get anywhere. She sees what he’s doing, helps him, pushes up her bra so he can take her into his mouth.

The sound she makes leaves him hard.

Her free hand - the one not in his hair and keeping his own hand captive where all he can reach is her breast (which really isn’t all that bad, but he’d like to start thinking about the main event here) - deftly plucks the button on his jeans and slips under his briefs. He freezes, his whole body going still like some frightened animal, and his eyes fly to her. She smiles proudly and _fuck_ if that isn’t the hottest damn thing he’s ever seen.

He grabs her again, pulls both him and her up as far as he’s gotta for a kiss and her fingers brush his head and it’s his turn to make a sound. She laughs, breaking the kiss, and grabs for his jeans with both hands, eager as he is to get this going.

When he pushes into her, she cries out, tips her head back against the metal bed so all he can see is her white throat in the moonlight and he thinks for a second he’s hurt her, but then she’s grasping, pulling at him, saying his name over and over like she thinks he’ll stop if she doesn’t keep asking for more.

And later, when he rolls them over and keeps her pinned to his chest, she comes without protest, curling close and sighing across his skin. He keeps his hand at the small of her back, anchoring her to him, and he thinks, maybe, hunting down SHIELD’s not such a bad idea. They’d be safer than any of his other options.

 


	9. (Jemma/Hive) on a table

The lab quiets and more than one pair of wide eyes turns to the door directly behind Jemma. She knows those looks; they’re the same ones that get thrown about every time Easler drops by to deliver more intimidation and empty threats. (It’s not _her_ fault his boyfriend was a prat who thought he could cut her budget.) After his last empty promise to bring a swift death down upon her ( _two days_ ago; who is he kidding?) she really can’t help herself.

“So,” she says dryly, “death has finally come for me.”

There’s a protracted silence following her statement, long enough for her to notice the intensity of her colleagues’ fear has _increased_ , where typically her sarcasm and lack of concern is a signal for them to reign in their worry. The spot directly between her shoulder blades prickles with a lingering awareness that puts her in mind of an animal being watched by a predator.

“No,” a voice she doesn’t know at all says and she whirls to meet the eyes of not Easler, but _the Inhuman_. The one that was brought through the portal and who is destined to _rule the planet_. His eyes draw slowly over her and the prickling sensation spreads in the wake of his gaze. “Not yet,” he says and he steps away as if she’d been only a brief stop on a perusal of the labs.

The shaking agent following close behind him shoots her a horrified look on his way past. The both of them leave unbearably slowly and, once they’re gone, the only sound in the lab is the angry squeal of Jemma’s stool against the floor when she falls onto it.

Easler might just get his wish after all.

 

 

&&&&&

 

 

It’s all anyone will talk about. Oh, not to Jemma - no one’s fool enough to talk _to_ her anymore - but _around_ her, certainly. There are whispers and covertly aimed fingers and her name spoken in hushed tones like she’s goddamn Voldemort.

It is a very long day.

And, just when she thinks it’s over and she’s made the first step by freeing her feet from her heels, there’s a most inconvenient knock on her door. She perhaps pulls it open with more force than is strictly necessary, only to reveal the telekinetic, Giyera.

She has the _worst_ luck with Inhumans.

He barely even looks at her before ordering her to, “Come with me.” As he immediately turns on his heel and makes his way down the hall, she has no choice but to follow, shoeless.

He doesn’t slow or stop or even move out of the way for anyone. When one fumbling agent drops his burden of files in his attempts to clear their path, Giyera sends the papers flying into a wall where they remain suspended in a frozen wave that is only allowed to slip back down to the floor once she’s passed by as well.

He leads her deeper into the facility, into sections she isn’t cleared to enter, until finally he stands at attention beside a closed door. She stares, uncertain what she’s meant to-

The knob turns of its own accord - or more likely Giyera’s - and he gives a faint tip of his head towards it, indicating she had better follow through on what he’s begun. She catches the knob as the door begins to slide open and steps through, her curiosity propelling her forward.

“Oh,” she says, her eyes falling immediately on the Inhuman. Not Giyera, as he’s still outside - and closing the door firmly at her back so that she’s forced to step deeper in or be struck - but the other one, the important one. He’s sitting at the end of a table laid with rich foods on fine china.

“Hive,” he says.

“What?” she asks and he smiles at her confusion.

“You may call me Hive.” He gestures to the end of the table and, dumbly, she heads for the seat there.

She doesn’t take it.

“I- I’m sorry,” she says, taking another look around the room. This seems to be all there is, as if he, on a whim, had one of the many multi-purpose rooms on base turned into his own private dining room. “ _What_ is going on?”

“Yours,” he says and he really must stop speaking in non sequitur. He grins. “If anything, it is _your_ private dining room.” He gestures again for the seat and she realizes that there is no place set before his. “I tend to be … indelicate.”

She lowers herself slowly into the chair, regarding him carefully as she does so. Once she’s seated, she takes her time examining the dishes closest to her - she doesn’t recognize half of them, but the smell has her stomach near to growling already, all warm meat and hot butter and heady spices. She takes small portions of each item within her immediate reach before setting in.

“So you read minds,” she says as she spears a piece of what she assumes to be beef.

“Lamb, actually,” he says and she lifts her eyes from her plate to fix him with her most incredulous glare. He is unrepentant.

She goes on eating, keeping her thoughts firmly on the food simply to spite him.

“When we met,” he says when she’s on the third dish, “you thought at first I was someone else. Someone come to kill you?”

She waves a hand even as she files away that information - that he can read her thoughts but apparently cannot dig through her mind past that (or else is simply choosing to engage in conversation like a civilized individual now that he’s had to endure her chronicling of the various spices used on the potatoes). “Dwight Easler,” she says. “His lover was my superior and tried to hamstring my budget for the next quarter.”

“And that led to an attempt on your life?”

She sets down her utensils. He obviously doesn’t know or he wouldn’t be asking (if he did, she imagines he’d be grinning like the cat who ate the canary) and she decides she’d like to see his reaction.

“He argued there was simply no room for my equipment demands and after several refusals on his part to see reason, I shot him in the chest.” It’s a serious matter - serious enough Easler wants her dead for it - but she can’t help the giddy sort of grin that curls her lips as she says the words.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is, people tend to think Jemma isn’t cut out for Hydra. If she had a nickel for every time someone spoke over her, assuming she was brainwashed, she wouldn’t need Easler and his budgets. Shooting him has given her some long-overdue credibility as an agent.

A chuckle escapes Hive and his eyes crinkle in a very appealing way. “I knew I liked you,” he says and motions to her plate.

It’s a tad infantilizing - she can choose for herself when and what to eat, thank you - but she resumes all the same. As she delicately consumes her meal, he watches her with a steadily increasing hunger.

She could eat more - and that plate of fruit down near his end looks almost _too_ good to eat - but with his expression in mind, she stops when she’s through with her first plate.

“Finished so soon?” he asks in an utterly unconvincing innocent tone.

“Why am I here?” she asks, arching an eyebrow. The expression has done wonders for getting her what she wants since Sterling’s death, but it has no visible effect at all on Hive.

“Because I felt, from our initial encounter, that I might enjoy you.”

“And?” she prompts.

He raises his own brow in silent question.

“Were you correct in your initial assessment?” she asks, her tone, as is her habit, just this side of disrespectful.

His lips curl. “How can I know that when I haven’t tasted you yet?”

It’s a ludicrous come-on, enough to have her biting her lip to hold back a laugh. But also enough to propel her from her chair. He watches, mildly curious, as she rounds the table and rests one hand on the back of his chair to steady herself before sitting carefully astride his lap.

“No,” she agrees, “you haven’t.”

He smiles and she means to wait another moment more, draw it out before slowly leaning in for a kiss, but he digs a twisting hand into her hair and pulls her to him. The kiss is almost punishing and she lets out a brief whimper before the pleasure of it overwhelms her.

Her knees and calves dig painfully into the wooden arms of the chair as she tries to move her hips against his, but before she can find any of the friction she seeks, she’s up. He lifts her out of the chair entirely but never breaks the kiss, not even when he sets her on the edge of the table and the dishes rattle loudly.  She can’t care for that, not when she’s just figured out the clasps on his coat. They come undone easily now that she knows how and he pauses to smile at her once she’s got it open, revealing an oddly normal t-shirt beneath - and then he tears her own shirt, sending buttons flying and leaving her in tatters.

She gasps, ready to demand an apology, but he kisses her again, cutting her off and stealing all thoughts of indignity from her head.

His hand dips unto her bra. His thumb brushes her already hard nipple and her knees tighten around his thighs. “It’s been millennia since I touched a woman,” he says, the words echoing against the shell of her ear, “you will have to tell me what pleases you.”

There’s a comment on the tip of her tongue, something about his being telepathic and does he really need her to verbalize her feelings? But then his hand is moving beneath the pencil skirt she wore into the office today, pushing the fabric up so that he can ruin yet another perfectly serviceable article of clothing. Her wet knickers are shredded with barely a flick of his fingers and then his thumb is on her clit and his fingers are teasing at her opening and she should be embarrassed of the sounds she’s making but there isn’t enough sense left in her brain to care.

He holds the back of her head, keeping her poised on the edge of the table and her breasts pressed wonderfully against his chest. She nearly cries when he leaves off touching her to wrap bruising fingers around her hip, but realizes why he’d do something so heartless a moment later when he enters her.

For all his earlier hurry, he goes almost agonizingly slow now. He watches her face, clearly enjoying her desperation and not at all bothered by the way she drags her nails over his bare shoulders. She can feel blood flowing but he only goes on smiling like she’s some entertaining toy.

Finally his hips rest against hers and he stops, allowing her a brief moment to catch her breath. It’s not relief - that is still a long way off and his hand on her hip prevents her from finding it for herself - but it’s a calm in the center of the storm.

“So,” he says placidly, “this is not pleasing to you?”

He begins to move away and she wraps her hands around the back of his neck as waves of sensation crash over her, leaving her shaking.

“No, no,” she says quickly. “This is good. Very good.”

“More then?”

She bites her lip and nods. He arches one eyebrow and she remembers with some annoyance that he demanded she _say_ what she enjoys. There’s no way he could know how tongue-tied she gets during sex, but if there were, she’d be certain this was some sort of punishment for the disrespect she showed him this morning.

“ _Yes_ ,” she pants.

He slams back into her and she cries out. “As you wish.”

 

 

&&&&&

 

 

She’s laying on the table, her skin cooling against the metal. Broken plates litter the floor and there’s some question in her mind as to how she’ll be getting down without injuring herself, but she’s still enjoying the afterglow and that worry is far, far away for now.

Hive smiles at her from beneath half-lowered lids while he buttons up his jacket, hiding the bloody stains that mar his shirt. There’s sure to be blood under her nails; she’s a little proud of that.

“You should be,” he says and bends to kiss her. It’s just a quick peck but she feels it down to her _toes_. “And now,” he says as he straightens, “death has come for you - and you for him.”

Jemma’s brain stutters over the words. Did he just make a _joke_? Has he been waiting to make that joke ever since this morning?

“Yes,” he says pleasantly - prat, “and I’ll happily make it again tomorrow evening, if you’re recovered.”

“Oh, I will be,” she says before she can stop her tongue; it’s still loose from the sex - looser than normal because he refused to move forward unless she demanded it. She doesn’t think her throat’s ever been this sore.

“Good,” he says and she has no idea if he means because she’s determined to be ready for him again or because she screamed her throat raw. “I’ll have your things brought from your quarters and there’s a bathroom through the door on the left.” He leaves in a hurry, probably off to make Malick wet himself or kill someone or some such, and it’s not until he’s gone that she realizes he’s essentially just moved her in with him.

She shifts her shoulders a little. She’ll worry about that once her body’s come down from the high he’s given her, which - as her skin and her muscles and her _everything_ is still buzzing - may be a long while yet.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally started as a fill for "against a wall" but I filled that with something else before finishing it, so you get "on a table" instead - which I actually think works better given the set-up. However, SafelyCapricious idly wished for a fic where Hive sees Jemma being proud of shooting a superior in the chest AND a fic where Jemma says, "so death has come for me," and Death/Hive responds, "not yet," (which is an exchange appears in a non-MCU related tumblr post I canNOT find the link for). So this is still kind of a prompt fill, just not a strictly location-based one.


	10. (Jemma/Grant) in HYDRA HQ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for wssummer's "ways to say I love you" theme. This was was not on the list but I think it still fits.

There’s a skull and tentacles on the wall, big and wide and grinning. She meets its hollow eyes steadily, well enough used to it by now that it doesn’t worsen the fright that woke her.

“Tell me again,” she says into the chilly silence.

She knows, despite his stillness, that Grant woke almost the same moment she did - he’s told her before he can’t sleep while his partner’s awake - and so it’s no surprise at all when his hand moves from its resting place on the edge of her hip to slide up her back and into her hair.

“You’ve heard it,” he says patiently, “a hundred times.”

She buries her face in his neck briefly before moving lower to kiss his collarbone. He’s warm against the night-cooled air and her skin craves more of him. She’s familiar enough with him now to know he massages her neck simply because it’s his way, but she lets herself dream he does it because he recognized her unvoiced thought. The slow, small circles he makes with the heel of his hand are mesmerizing; if she only stays quiet, in a few minutes she’ll be back asleep.

But if she sleeps again, she’ll dream again. She can’t do that, not until she’s been reminded.

“Please,” she says.

She sinks a little as the breath sighs out of him. “Okay. Coulson handed me over to the feds-”

She shakes her head briefly, dragging her tangled hair against his skin. “Not that far. Only- only the end.”

Laying atop him as she is, it’s easy to feel his breathing stall and his heartbeat pick up. He was exaggerating when he said she’s heard it a hundred times - but not by much. Truthfully, she could recite it all from memory at this point, but it’s not the same as hearing him say it; she knows he must be growing tired of the request.

“Okay,” he says again and this time she hears the smile in it. She feels it too, in the way he squeezes her neck. She hopes she doesn’t ruin his relief by requiring the whole history of him the next time, but for tonight at least, she knows she’ll be satisfied with only the tail end. “Okay so, after- after Kara-”

She tips her head up to kiss the bottom of his jaw. It hurts him to speak of the woman he loved before her and it’s always the point at which she worries he’ll have to stop this story.

“-Hunter came after me. May too - just because, I guess. I was still- I wasn’t in a good place, and they got me. I’m not proud of it but there it is. They dragged me into their base, threw me back in that godawful cell, and left me to wait.”

Now that he’s past the worst of it, his hand starts sliding up and down her back in steady, even strokes. Her eyes drift shut.

“They were gonna brainwash me - hollow me out and leave me without my memories.”

He pauses and though she’s not looking, she can feel his head lift from the pillow so he can better see her.

“You wouldn’t do it. You knew it was wrong - said some sanctimonious thing about there still being some HYDRA in SHIELD - and you broke me out, even after all I’d done to you.”

She holds him a little tighter.

“We spent a few weeks on the run, got to know each other a little better.” There’s a wicked edge to those words and he underscores them with a pinch to her bum. “And then SHIELD showed up. They took you from me. And I don’t know what came next. Maybe they tried to talk sense into you, maybe they just gave up on you when they found out what we were to each other. In the end it’s all the same thing: they used the TAHITI machine on you.”

He’s shaking with fury and she kisses her way up to his cheek to sooth the worst of it. He clings to her as she cradles his head to her breast. She can’t imagine what it was like for him, finally mustering the force to breach the Playground, only to find her like that. She doesn’t remember that time herself. Her first concrete memory after the darkness that spans more than a year of her life is of Grant’s hurt expression when she pulled away from him. He hadn’t known until that moment that they’d taken her love for him and it wasn’t until much later that he even knew just how far they’d gone.

She kisses him - because she’s sorry, because she’s grateful, because she loves him. She doesn’t know if it’s the same as it was before and she likely never will - he’s refused to let her near Garrett’s memory machine, begged her to promise him she’ll never subject herself to it - but it’s real and it’s all she can offer him.

Emotionally, at any rate. The kisses grow heated quickly and soon he’s rolled her beneath him. This she can give him too and far more easily than the other. She can’t bring herself to speak the words for fear they’ll strike the wrong chord against his intact memories but this she knows is right. She can see it in his smile, near-boyish in his delight, and feel it in the singing of her blood when he touches her bare skin.

She wraps her fingers around his waist and moves them up to his chest, feeling the motion of his muscles as he takes them both higher. His hand is at her core and he’s moving inside her, setting a rhythm fit to drown out the deafening silence of her own memories. She can’t remember the first time he touched her like this but she’s certain her body does.

She feels a passing embarrassment for the noises she makes - tiny groans and whimpers elicited by each roll of his hips - but his pleased grin makes it all worth it. He’s so proud to leave her speechless, how can she mind it?

When she comes, he buries the sound of it in his shoulder and whispers words in languages she doesn’t know to guide her back down. She doesn’t notice when he rolls them to their previous positions and makes himself again her pillow, but very soon sleep is dragging her back under.

He kisses the crown of her head and she knows that this time, when she dreams, there will be no nightmares waiting for her.

 


End file.
